Heat Strokes for Different Folks

You may have noticed there's an amazing number of all-day outdoor festival concerts coming to OC in the next few days. The Vans Warped Tour is Thursday and Friday. Hootenanny is Saturday. This Ain't No Picnic is Sunday. If you're not dead at this point, you can think about going to Monday's hip-hop festival, the BBQ.

Then you can die. Look on the bright side: when you're dead, you can't hear your ears ringing.

Now, you're probably thinking that you'll just go out and buy some tickets and go to some of these shows. That is a bad, bad idea—BAD! We cannot in good faith allow you to make such a horrible mistake. We're talking preparation, people. P to the motherfucking R to the motherfucking eparation. And we're not fucking around. Imagine the baseball player who's getting ready to go up to bat. Does he sit there with his thumb up his ass, munching a sandwich, reading a magazine, and talking on his cell phone? Hell, no. He swings two bats so that when he takes his turn, his one bat feels light as a pencil, which, for some reason, is a good thing in baseball.

This is the ingenious philosophy behind Heat Strokes for Different Folks: the OC Weekly Festival Concert Preparation Manual Course™ (as seen on TV!). By following these simple festival-concert simulation exercises, designed with your every discomfort in mind, you will find that the actual concert itself is a breeze.

GETTING INTO THE VENUE You may as well start the way you're going to end up. Stick a rock in your shoe, hike your underwear up your butt, squirt some sunscreen into your eyes, smear your face with dirt, and climb the tallest unpaved hill you can find. Remove rock, pick wedgie, replace rock, hike underwear, and repeat—this time going down the hill. Do this for a few mornings in a row in reps of 100. (100 times up and down the hill, rest, 100 up and down the hill, rest, etc.) In no time at all, the feeling of a rock in your shoe and underwear in your ass will mean only one thing: party time!

BEING FRISKED Find two unattractive, unpleasant, preferably short people. Have one of them pat you down, leaving no section of your body untouched, while the other gives you a menacing look. Repeat until you no longer giggle or feel ticklish. For fun, hide "kooky" items on your person. Think of the laugh the frisker will get when he or she finds that power drill tucked in your sock! And everyone likes the kid with the screwdriver under his hat or the ounce of pot rolled up in her bra!

SHOWING YOUR TICKET a piece of flimsy cardboard into a rectangle. Put 3 bucks into an envelope, call it a service charge, and throw it out the window. Get used to showing this cardboard rectangle repeatedly to people strategically placed every 10 or so feet in your living room. If your living room is small, position two people at opposite corners of your living room and walk back and forth between the two people, putting your ticket in your pocket and retrieving it repeatedly. If you are over 21, show one of the two people your drivers' license and have this person tie a piece of masking tape tightly around your wrist, sticky side down. If you are under 21, have him or her spit on you.

WALKING THROUGH THAT VENDOR SECTION Light incense and patchouli, spread ratty blankets on the floor, and invite your hippie friends to come over and play hacky-sack in the middle of your living room. Invite over two more friends and have one try to sell you stuff while the other friend asks repeatedly if you're registered to vote and would be willing to sign this petition to end/solve/help world hunger/

PERSECUTION/CRUELTY, ETC. At some point, approach the friend who's trying to sell you something. Give this person $10 and have him or her give you $5 in return. Repeat until you have no money left, and when you walk away have the friend offer $5 for $9, $5 for $8, etc.

RUNNING INTO PEOPLE Grab some ex-boyfriends or -girlfriends and a handful of people you don't like. Some good ones to have on hand: the Bitchy Girl You Work With, That Rude Girl From That Store You Always Go Into, and the Friend of a Friend Who Never Liked You. Have them mill about your living room. Get used to running into them repeatedly, as for some unexplained reason, these will be the people you really repeatedly run into, even though you have lost the three best friends you arrived with and believe one to be dead.

RUNNING INTO PEOPLE, LITERALLY Get 70 helium-filled balloons. Smear them with something slimy, like Crisco. Nothing says sweaty shirtless men like Crisco-covered balloons. Put balloons into a phone booth. Enter phone booth and move around a little bit. Notice that when balloons hit you in the face or shoulder—much like when some guy steps on your head in the mosh pit—they never say "excuse me" or "sorry."